At seven bells the first gong rang; at eight there was breakfast, for such as were not too seasick to eat it. After that all the well people walked arm in arm up and down the long promenade deck, enjoying the fine summer mornings, and the seasick ones crawled out and propped themselves up in the lee of the paddle boxes and ate their dismal tea and toast, and looked wretched. From eleven o'clock until luncheon, and from luncheon until dinner at six in the evening, the employments and amusements were various. Some reading was done, and much smoking and sewing, though not by the same parties; there were the monsters of the deep to be looked after and wondered at; strange ships had to be scrutinized through opera glasses, and sage decisions arrived at concerning them; and more than that, everybody took a personal interest in seeing that the flag was run up and politely dipped three times in response to the salutes of those strangers; in the smoking room there were always parties of gentlemen playing euchre, draughts, and dominoes, especially dominoes, that delightfully harmless game; and down on the main deck, "forrard"--forrard of the chicken coops and the cattle--we had what was called "horse billiards." Horse billiards is a fine game. It affords good, active exercise, hilarity, and consuming excitement. It is a mixture of "hopscotch" and shuffleboard played with a crutch. A large hopscotch diagram is marked out on the deck with chalk, and each compartment numbered. You stand off three or four steps, with some broad wooden disks before you on the deck, and these you send forward with a vigorous thrust of a long crutch. If a disk stops on a chalk line, it does not count anything. If it stops in division No. 7, it counts 7; in 5, it counts 5, and so on. The game is 100, and four can play at a time. That game would be very simple played on a stationary floor, but with us, to play it well required science. We had to allow for the reeling of the ship to the right or the left. Very often one made calculations for a heel to the right and the ship did not go that way. The consequence was that that disk missed the whole hopscotch plan a yard or two, and then there was humiliation on one side and laughter on the other.
When it rained the passengers had to stay in the house, of course--or at least the cabins--and amuse themselves with games, reading, looking out of the windows at the very familiar billows, and talking gossip.
By seven o'clock in the evening, dinner was about over; an hour's promenade on the upper deck followed; then the gong sounded and a large majority of the party repaired to the after cabin (upper), a handsome saloon fifty or sixty feet long, for prayers. The unregenerated called this saloon the "Synagogue." The devotions consisted only of two hymns from the Plymouth Collection and a short prayer, and seldom occupied more than fifteen minutes. The hymns were accompanied by parlor-organ music when the sea was smooth enough to allow a performer to sit at the instrument without being lashed to his chair.
After prayers the Synagogue shortly took the semblance of a writing school.
The like of that picture was never seen in a ship before. Behind the long
dining tables on either side of the saloon, and scattered from one end to the
other of the latter, some twenty or thirty gentlemen and ladies sat them down
under the swaying lamps and for two or three hours wrote diligently in their
journals. Alas that journals so voluminously begun should come to so lame and
impotent a conclusion as most of them did! I doubt if there is a single pilgrim
of all that host but can show a hundred fair pages of journal concerning the
first twenty days' voyaging in the Quaker City, and I am morally certain
that not ten of the party can show twenty pages of journal for the succeeding
twenty thousand miles of voyaging! At certain periods it becomes the dearest
ambition of a man to keep a faithful record of his performances in a book; and
he dashes at this work with an enthusiasm that imposes on him the notion that
keeping a journal is the veriest pastime in the world, and the pleasantest.
But if he only lives twenty-one days, he will find out that only those rare
natures that are made up of pluck, endurance, devotion to duty for duty's sake,
and invincible determination may hope to venture upon so tremendous an
enterprise as the keeping of a journal and not sustain a shameful defeat.
One of our favorite youths, Jack, a splendid young fellow with a head full of
good sense, and a pair of legs that were a wonder to look upon in the way of
length and straightness and slimness, used to report progress every morning in
the most glowing and spirited way, and say:
"Oh, I'm coming along bully!" (He was a little given to slang in his happier
moods.) "I wrote ten pages in my journal last night--and you know I wrote nine
the night before and twelve the night before that. Why, it's only fun!"
"What do you find to put in it, Jack?"
"Oh, everything. Latitude and longitude, noon every day; and how many miles we
made last twenty-four hours; and all the domino games I beat and horse
billiards; and whales and sharks and porpoises; and the text of the sermon
Sundays (because that'll tell at home, you know); and the ships we saluted and
what nation they were; and which way the wind was, and whether there was a
heavy sea, and what sail we carried, though we don't ever carry any,
principally, going against a head wind always--wonder what is the reason of
that?--and how many lies Moult has told--oh, everything! I've got everything
down. My father told me to keep that journal. Father wouldn't take a thousand
dollars for it when I get it done."
"No, Jack; it will be worth more than a thousand dollars--when you get it
done."
"Do you? No, but do you think it will, though?"
"Yes, it will be worth at least as much as a thousand dollars--when you get it
done. Maybe more."
"Well, I about half think so, myself. It ain't no slouch of a journal."
But it shortly became a most lamentable "slouch of a journal." One night in
Paris, after a hard day's toil in sightseeing, I said:
"Now I'll go and stroll around the cafés awhile, Jack, and give you a
chance to write up your journal, old fellow."
His countenance lost its fire. He said:
"Well, no, you needn't mind. I think I won't run that journal anymore. It is
awful tedious. Do you know--I reckon I'm as much as four thousand pages
behindhand. I haven't got any France in it at all. First I thought I'd leave
France out and start fresh. But that wouldn't do, would it? The
governor would say, 'Hello, here--didn't see anything in France? That
cat wouldn't fight, you know. First I thought I'd copy France out of the
guidebook, like old Badger in the forrard cabin, who's writing a book, but
there's more than three hundred pages of it. Oh, I don't think a
journal's any use---do you? They're only a bother, ain't they?"
"Yes, a journal that is incomplete isn't of much use, but a journal properly
kept is worth a thousand dollars--when you've got it done."
"A thousand!--well, I should think so. I wouldn't finish it for a million."
His experience was only the experience of the majority of that industrious
night school in the cabin. If you wish to inflict a heartless and malignant
punishment upon a young person, pledge him to keep a journal a year.
A good many expedients were resorted to to keep the excursionists amused and
satisfied. A club was formed, of all the passengers, which met in the writing
school after prayers and read aloud about the countries we were approaching and
discussed the information so obtained.
Several times the photographer of the expedition brought out his transparent
pictures and gave us a handsome magic-lantern exhibition. His views were
nearly all of foreign scenes, but there were one or two home pictures among
them. He advertised that he would "open his performance in the after cabin at
'two bells' (nine P.M.) and show the passengers where they shall eventually
arrive"--which was all very well, but by a funny accident the first picture
that flamed out upon the canvas was a view of Greenwood Cemetery!
On several starlight nights we danced on the upper deck, under the awnings, and
made something of a ballroom display of brilliancy by hanging a number of
ship's lanterns to the stanchions. Our music consisted of the well-mixed
strains of a melodeon which was a little asthmatic and apt to catch its breath
where it ought to come out strong, a clarinet which was a little unreliable on
the high keys and rather melancholy on the low ones, and a disreputable
accordion that had a leak somewhere and breathed louder than it squawked--a
more elegant term does not occur to me just now. However, the dancing was
infinitely worse than the music. When the ship rolled to starboard the whole
platoon of dancers came charging down to starboard with it, and brought up in
mass at the rail; and when it rolled to port they went floundering down to port
with the same unanimity of sentiment. Waltzers spun around precariously for a
matter of fifteen seconds and then went scurrying down to the rail as if they
meant to go overboard. The Virginia reel, as performed on board the Quaker
City, had more genuine reel about it than any reel I ever saw before, and
was as full of interest to the spectator as it was full of desperate chances
and hairbreadth escapes to the participant. We gave up dancing, finally.
We celebrated a lady's birthday anniversary with toasts, speeches, a poem, and
so forth. We also had a mock trial. No ship ever went to sea that hadn't a
mock trial on board. The purser was accused of stealing an overcoat from
stateroom No. 10. A judge was appointed; also clerks, a crier of the court,
constables, sheriffs; counsel for the State and for the defendant; witnesses
were subpoenaed, and a jury empaneled after much challenging. The witnesses
were stupid and unreliable and contradictory, as witnesses always are. The
counsel were eloquent, argumentative, and vindictively abusive of each other,
as was characteristic and proper. The case was at last submitted and duly
finished by the judge with an absurd decision and a ridiculous sentence.
The acting of charades was tried on several evenings by the young gentlemen and
ladies, in the cabins, and proved the most distinguished success of all the
amusement experiments.
An attempt was made to organize a debating club, but it was a failure. There
was no oratorical talent in the ship.
We all enjoyed ourselves--I think I can safely say that, but it was in a rather
quiet way. We very, very seldom played the piano; we played the flute and the
clarinet together, and made good music, too, what there was of it, but we
always played the same old tune; it was a very pretty tune--how well I remember
it--I wonder when I shall ever get rid of it. We never played either the
melodeon or the organ except at devotions --but I am too fast: young Albert
did know part of a tune something about "O Something-or-Other How Sweet
It Is to Know That He's His What's-His-Name" (I do not remember the exact title
of it, but it was very plaintive and full of sentiment); Albert played that
pretty much all the time until we contracted with him to restrain himself. But
nobody ever sang by moonlight on the upper deck, and the congregational singing
at church and prayers was not of a superior order of architecture. I put up
with it as long as I could and then joined in and tried to improve it, but this
encouraged young George to join in too, and that made a failure of it; because
George's voice was just "turning," and when he was singing a dismal sort of
bass it was apt to fly off the handle and startle everybody with a most
discordant cackle on the upper notes. George didn't know the tunes, either,
which was also a drawback to his performances. I said:
"Come, now, George, don't improvise. It looks too egotistical. It will
provoke remark. Just stick to 'Coronation,' like the others. It is a good
tune--you can't improve it any, just offhand, in this way."
"Why, I'm not trying to improve it-- and I am singing like the
others--just as it is in the notes."
And he honestly thought he was, too; and so he had no one to blame but himself
when his voice caught on the center occasionally and gave him the lockjaw.
There were those among the unregenerated who attributed the unceasing head
winds to our distressing choir music. There were those who said openly that it
was taking chances enough to have such ghastly music going on, even when it was
at its best; and that to exaggerate the crime by letting George help was simply
flying in the face of Providence. These said that the choir would keep up
their lacerating attempts at melody until they would bring down a storm some
day that would sink the ship.
There were even grumblers at the prayers. The executive officer said the
pilgrims had no charity:
"There they are, down there every night at. eight bells, praying for fair
winds--when they know as well as I do that this is the only ship going east
this time of the year, but there's a thousand coming west--what's a fair wind
for us is a head wind to them--the Almighty's blowing a fair wind for a
thousand vessels, and this tribe wants him to turn it clear around so as to
accommodate one--and she a steamship at that! It ain't good sense, it
ain't good reason, it ain't good Christianity, it ain't common human charity.
Avast with such nonsense!"
Continue to Chapter 5
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